McCaffery: Hiring stats guru not really what 76ers need

Philadelphia 76ers coach Doug Collins calls a play against the Denver Nuggets in the second half of an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Philadelphia. The 76ers won 84-75. (AP Photo H. Rumph Jr)

Just when you were in a panic that it would never happen, the Sixers this week added the former basketball co-captain at MIT. He's Aaron Barzilai, and he is their new director of basketball analytics. And LeBron James was expecting the Miami Heat to win multiple championships. Doesn't he feel ridiculous now?

Basically, Barzilai will micro-crunch basketball plus-minus figures and submit them for general manager Tony DiLeo as a tool for player acquisition and pay-scale determination. It's basketball's answer to the Moneyball movement in baseball. In related news, the Sixers chose not to hire a director of not turning the ball over in traffic or soothing Andrew Bynum's knees.

Since the Sixers are 0-since-1983, who are they to avoid the cutting edge, anyway? Just the same, didn't it seem more fun back when the Sixers didn't need such nonsense, and instead just let Pat Williams let loose a stream of fat jokes after they'd drafted Charles Barkley?

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In another week, Wladimir Klitschko will risk his four heavyweight world championship belts in a fight against 27-0 Mariusz Wach in Germany. If he wins -- and he always does -- Klitschko's record will go to 59-3 and he will have remained unbeaten since 2004. Meanwhile, his brother, Vitaly Klitschko, the WBC heavyweight champion, has not lost since 2003. The Klitschkos are a combined 103-5.

Somehow, though, the American sports press is more likely to falsely complain that boxing's heavyweight division is empty. Then it will obsess instead over Bernard Hopkins' next tirade against Donovan McNabb.

That spray that makes tires look darker? I'll pass, thanks.

In other sports involving Russians and close-to-Russians, local TV has been forced to recycle classic hockey footage as the NHL lockout plods along. Among the treats has been the 1976 showdown between the two-time Stanley Cup champion Flyers and the Soviet Red Army. It may have been mentioned once or twice since, but that was the day the Russians left the Spectrum ice in protest of the Flyers' legendary bullying.

Here's the risk of running a film on a loop: Each spin adds context. And upon further review, the Flyers were ridiculous that day, turning a hockey rink into an MMA hexagon. It was their best (their only?) chance to win, and they did win. And technically, the proper response should have been a return of those vicious, unprovoked checks, not a retreat to the dressing room.

But the Soviets intended to play hockey, not to be punked for no reason other than that the Flyers had a reputation to protect. They were right to protest.

Thus, a fresh recommendation: Bury the film and let the legend breathe, the one about how the Flyers courageously protected the honor of the NHL during the Cold War. Because the more that thing is played, the more likely it will be that new generations of hockey fans will misinterpret an otherwise glorious moment of Flyers hockey.

I don't get any TV commercial featuring a fake doctor.

The NHL players had their knees buckled this week by a shot they never expected to take. The league canceled its Winter Classic. So now what?

The players had to see that annual asinine money-printing spectacle as a firewall -- as the one reason the owners would have to settle. Why would the league reject the opportunity to televise fans risking frostbite in a Michigan football stadium in January? Why would it avoid its thrill of exposing players to possibly playing in a blizzard?

The NHL would have no problem canceling its preseason or early-season games that would only conflict, anyway, with the NFL or the World Series. But the Winter Classic? Never.

Well, it did. And while that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the season, it means the players had to feel like Michael Leighton after the last shot of the 2010 playoffs.

They knew they'd lost. They just couldn't figure out how.

And as the Eagles head to New Orleans to play against football's worst defense: Steve Spagnuolo -- I don't get it.